Complex systems, such as modern aircrafts, can involve hundreds of miles of wiring. Wires are used to distribute power and data to various types of electrical equipment. Diagrams illustrating representations of complex systems are called schematic diagrams. Schematic diagrams include multiple components to illustrate the subject matter of the particular diagram. For example, in the aircraft industry, electrical wiring diagrams are used to illustrate all of the conductive paths among the various elements of the aircraft. Thus, the term component used herein refers to any type of element included in the particular schematic diagram to illustrate the desired subject matter. In electrical wiring diagrams, for instance, components include modules, line replaceable units, plugs, switches, buses, power sources, grounds, wires, connectors, and the like.
Typically, the schematic diagram is embodied in a set of multiple hard copy sheets that each includes a relatively small portion of the overall schematic diagram. Thus, each sheet in a set includes references to other sheets where the portion of the schematic diagram is continued. These references are typically called “off-sheet references.” The hard copy sheet sets are very time consuming and difficult for users, such as maintenance personnel, to use, particularly when they need to reference more than one component. Users must manually locate one of the components in the off-sheet references and then trace the connection to the other component through one or more additional sheets. In addition, many times a component is illustrated on multiple sheets, such as when the component is included in more than one conductive path. Thus, a user must first locate the sheet that includes the desired conductive path associated with the component.
The aerospace industry is moving away from the manual production of technical illustrations including publishing of traditional Wiring Diagram Manuals and System Schematic Manuals. The component information that exists in the manuals may be distributed and may be used to generate drawings dynamically. For example, a user might generate a wiring drawing that traces a signal path from source to ground, or a drawing that shows all the wires in a single bundle, or a drawing that shows all the components in a single airplane system.
Methods for automatically generating dynamic diagrams are disclosed in a related application, US Patent Office doc number 20050114096, entitled “Method, system and computer program product for automatically generating a subset of task-based components from engineering and maintenance data”, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.
The drawings are dynamically generated for task-specific use; suppliers, vendors, and operators can directly modify the databases, view the resulting drawings immediately, and publish the changes back to the original creator of the dynamic drawings.
The existing dynamic layout process illustrates schematic diagrams as a “canvas” consisting of a grid layout where the components are located. Each component is placed in a (column, row) location in the grid and connections are routed between components.
For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a diagram of a canvas of an electrical layout of a maintenance system in an aircraft that is generated using existing dynamic wiring layout technology. FIG. 1 shows a dynamically generated wiring diagram of a canvas for an airplane system without defined groupings of related components. The existing dynamic layout processes do not represent groupings of related components.
While existing processes suit their intended purpose, there remains a need for a system and method that operates to dynamically generate dynamic layouts representing groupings of related components.